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What Medical Technology exactly is

Medical technology can be considered as any technology used to save lives in individuals suffering from a wide range of conditions. In its many forms, medical technology is already diagnosing, monitoring and treating virtually every disease or condition that affects us. Medical technology can be familiar, everyday objects such as sticking plasters, syringes or latex gloves. Alternatively, it could also be spectacles, wheelchairs and hearing aids. Meanwhile, at the high tech end of the scale, medical technology includes total body scanners, implantable devices such as heart valves and pacemakers, and replacement joints for knees and hips. In fact, there are more than 500,000 medical technologies currently available and they all share a common purpose: improving and extending peoples’ lives⁽¹⁾.

The common thread through all applications of medical technology is the beneficial impact on health and quality of life. They all contribute to living longer, better and empowering citizens to contribute to society for longer. In so doing, they improve the quality of care, and the efficacy and sustainability of healthcare systems. In Europe, medical technology is also a major contributor to the EU economy, employing over 575,000 people⁽²⁾ in high quality jobs. The market size is estimated at roughly €100 billion⁽³⁾.

How is medical technology defined?

The best way to describe Medical technology, and more specifically medical devices, is to use the definition of the European Commission in their ‘EU Medical Devices Directive’.

This Directive states that a medical device is: "Any instrument, apparatus, appliance, software, material or other article, whether used alone or in combination, including the software intended by its manufacturer to be used specifically for diagnostic and/or therapeutic purposes and necessary for its proper application, intended by the manufacturer to be used for human beings.”

"Devices are to be used for the purpose of:

• Diagnosis, prevention, monitoring, treatment or alleviation of disease
• Diagnosis, monitoring, treatment, alleviation of or compensation for an injury or handicap
• Investigation, replacement or modification of the anatomy or of a physiological process
• Control of conception

This includes devices that do not achieve its principal intended action in or on the human body by pharmacological, immunological or metabolic means, but which may be assisted in its function by such means.”

However, this does not really provide a perspective on how wide a range medical technology encompasses. There are more than 500,000 technologies, in 20,000 generic groups. These fall within 16 categories of products, as determined by the Global Medical Devices Nomenclature (GMDN) Agency.